How was your pc building experience?

[jrga]

Not doing ANY cable management and just shoving the remaining wires in a fan, wondered for about a month why there was an annoying clicking noise but I thought it was the HDD

[Blade of Grass]

My biggest thing is not properly thinking out how I'm going top do cabling, and ending up with a mess.

[Guest]

I put the cpu cooler on 180 degrees from where it was supposed to, which worked, but meant i had to unhitch the fan wire to plug it in..not as pretty anymore..

[Leivel2]

I didn't have the manual for the motherboard so I just kept trying different pins for the power button until it worked ...

I almost always do that with older sytems. At least there aren't hundreds of pins.

[popolongo]

Back in the day, Buying hardware based only on numbers, Forgetting about reliability and customer support!

[Drethstoff]

its technically my first build but i have been upgrading it since it was first built. I bought a noctua nh-d14 after I had the corsair h-50 for a while. I mounted the noctua and found that the temperatures were worse during a stress test. I was shocked and horribly pist. I put the middle fan on backwards so all the hot air was getting trapped back against the other fan...Needless to say, but when i flipped the fan around things went a lot better lol.

[WaspishVyper]

I bought crappy fans, until the last minute I forgot to order a power supply, forgot to plug the cable into the back of the power supply, tried to put my H100 (couldn't screw it in because heatsink was in the way of the holes) in after the motherboard, wrist strap detached itself from case and smacked me in the face, and finally forgot to plug in graphics card to power.

Btw I already know technology hates me, and trying to build a computer during my exam period was a really stupid idea.

[Vitalius]

On my first build.... Not considering how much dust would collect with it running 24/7 with like 10 fans.

I've been rough and tough with my CPU, so it's a miracle it still works fine. I've taken off the heatsink doing left, then right causing the heatsink to "pop" off to one side. I've taken the CPU out with the latch DOWN. It was stuck to the bottom of the heatsink. It took quite a bit of twisting to get it off. The whole time, I was sort of cringing on the inside thinking "Oh, it's not going to work anymore, I just know it," but bam. It still works fine.

[MLPosey27]

This is very fresh for me, as I completed my first build about a month ago.

Issues...

H100 didn't fit with the motherboard installed, so I had to move some fans around a bit.

SATA cable was pushed into the SSD, but not all the way. BIOS didn't read it but the connection looked fine at a glance.

Initially configured it so that you had to take off the side panel to change the CPU fan speed. Annoying.

But by far the most embarrassing was after installing Windows 7, it couldn't validate because I didn't have a network connection. So I spent 30+ minutes troubleshooting the modem and connections... before I remembered the drivers on the motherboard CD.

[xserd]

First build.. I bought an 8400gs.

[vanwazltoff]

for my first build i was 12, i think i had a problem installing windows 98. for my build a year and a half ago i installed windows on a WD green drive on IDE instead of AHCI and i bought noisy fans without a fan controller sounded like a bloody vacuum cleaner, also had a noisy reference 480 and a zalman heat sink. so much fail and noise DX

[vanwazltoff]

for my first build i was 12, i think i had a problem installing windows 98. for my build a year and a half ago i installed windows on a WD green drive on IDE instead of AHCI and i bought noisy fans without a fan controller sounded like a bloody vacuum cleaner, also had a noisy reference 480 and a zalman heat sink. so much fail and noise DX

to be fair i was over my budget and couldnt do anything about it at the time of the build

[vanwazltoff]

Bought a new GPU (7800GTX) and discovered my motherboard didn't have a PCI-E slot.

So I bought a new motherboard and discovered my CPU didn't fit inside it (socket 754 CPU, socket 939 mobo).

A GPU upgrade ended up costing a hell of a lot more than I'd planned.

thats terrible haha

[vanwazltoff]

I didn't use a screw driver to finish installing the standoffs...half of them were completely loose a year later

I also used IDE instead of AHCI

im not the only one! it should be set to AHCI by default

[vanwazltoff]

getting an amd bulldozer 6100

hahahaha. i got a reference 480, complete fail, bad temps and loud

[cxz]

I'm pleasantly surprised that I'm not the only one that has forgotten to plug in the 4 pin motherboard power connector and spend hours wondering why the computer wouldn't post.

Yeah same here my friend asked me why his comp won't work and I looked and looked and then bam I felt stupid and showed him the connector. He said he thought it went there, but his cable wouldn't reach behind his mobo, so he wasn't sure he needed it. lol

[vanwazltoff]

People closing the sidepanel before the first boot.

I will second that, also not running the system outside the case before throwing it in to make sure it posts.

Plugged my SATA cable into the motherboard but not my SSD couldn't figure out why the BIOs wasn't recognizing it. :3

my case was a week late in shipping so i had it running on my table top for a week, i got inpatient after a day of waiting

[EAGLEPWNAGE]

I pulled the wire to tight on the heat sink which made the fan catch the wire, sounded like a tank when it started :P

[Glaith]

forgot to plug in the CPU fan cable... lucky me I was looking inside the case when I started the machine for the first time. Since then I double check everything.

Done this one before :P

[Glaith]

I didn't have the manual for the motherboard so I just kept trying different pins for the power button until it worked ...

Oh the days before the mini writing under the pinz, those were the days

[Glaith]

Got the GPU stuck between the case and the MoBo. Almost broke it :D

Im assuming with the plate where it inserts to tower

[Glaith]

Bought a new GPU (7800GTX) and discovered my motherboard didn't have a PCI-E slot.

So I bought a new motherboard and discovered my CPU didn't fit inside it (socket 754 CPU, socket 939 mobo).

A GPU upgrade ended up costing a hell of a lot more than I'd planned.

whoa you live and learn tho ay haha

[Glaith]

Not my build but a friends who thought he knew what to do after watching me for a phew years..... His 1st build consisted of a AMD athlon x2 3ghz 4 gig ram and 2 x 8800gts, so nice PC for its time but when he called me and told me what happned i was heartbroken that the tech went to waste. He did not clip cpu cooler in correctly (aftermarket) sets computer up heat sink falls on top of 8800gt while system is running kills one 8800gt blows cpu, and ram had faults after that. bye bye monies.

[Fun.]

Plugging everything in on the front I/O.... except for the power button.

[Z3G]

I almost broke the front plate of the case by putting DVD drive first and then trying to put the plate on. Also because of that the DVD drive got stuck and it was really hard to pull it out :D